IKEA

RETROFIT 2009 | WELS/AUSTRIA

The creativity of IKEA, the multinational furniture group, has been driven by logistical challenges since its earliest days. It was in 1956 that Ingvar Kamprad, who founded the firm in Sweden’s sparsely populated southeastern region of Småland, began dispatching items of furniture by post – and invented the famous flat pack for that purpose. Today IKEA is the furniture market’s leading brand operating 267 furniture stores in 39 countries serviced from 43 central warehouses, employing 123,000 people, offering 9,500 products bought in from 1,220 suppliers, and occupying a total of 4 million m3 of storage space – making it one of the world’s largest warehouse users.

PROJECT OUTLINE

HIGH-BAY WAREHOUSE

Year of construction: 1989

Galvanized steel rack

L x W x H: 84 x 90 x 14 m

20 rack lanes, 1 switching aisle

Single-depth storage

Approx. 28,000 pallet spaces

Maximum payload: 1,000 kg

STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL MACHINES

10 aisle-switching, manually-controlled SRMs

Driving speed: 130 m/min

Driving acceleration: 0.5 m/s2

Hoisting speed: 25 m/min

Hoisting acceleration: 0.5 m/s2

Load handling device: telescopic fork

MATERIALS HANDLING TECHNOLOGY

Front side rack with handover bays for manual forklift operations

SOFTWARE

Radio terminals in the SRM cabins coupled with the IKEA forklift guidance system